The last few days have been eventful, as always.
More people lost their lives at various shrines, and Mr Zardari signed off on re-opening the ZAB trial case.
The doctors strike in the Punjab initiated by the Young Doctors Association (YDA) on the 1st of March 2011 extended to Out Patient Departments, and on the 27th, the doctors protested outside the Punjab Assembly where they were lathi charged, and some arrested, while several doctors lost their jobs since. Other doctors were recruited in their stead. In the Punjab, doctors withdrew their services from emergency departments.
Doctors across the country indicated their support with those in KP announcing they were joining the protest, many in Karachi and Quetta expressed their solidarity with the YDA.
Doctors are somehow perceived to be above other professionals, even such as judges and the police. The truth is that the Hippocratic Oath expressly forbids doctors to play at God. Doctors work like the rest of us, and like the rest of us they are entitled to be paid at a rate commensurate with their qualifications and work load, just like other professionals.
According to Mr Asad Jameel, Vice President of the YDA, the government has been promising to review doctors salaries for more than a year. Committees were formed, offers made, and doctors showed their will to compromise by accepting some of them; but the offers were not acted upon by the government which says it lacks the funds at present.
This is not borne out by the fact that last year, at the orders of the Chief Justice, the salary of civil judges in the Punjab was increased several-fold, while members of the police were offered a special package. Recently the Government of the Punjab felt flush enough in the pocket to offer half a million rupees in reward to each member of the Pakistan cricket team post the World Cup. Doctors, on the other hand, doctors work in many cases without any payment at all.
As matters stand, more than 20% of doctors doing their house job work for free, while the same is true for many post-graduate doctors.
Pay scales for young post-graduate doctors remain between 18,000 to 23,000 rupees per month, which is a pittance for such a responsible, skilled job. They have no health facilities, even though they work within the health sector.
These conditions have resulted in thousands of doctors leaving Pakistan to work in the Middle East, and more will follow, Mr Jameel says, unless reason prevails.
The doctors strike has resulted in scores of deaths across the Punjab. This only serves to underline the crucial nature of the work undertaken by these young professionals who spend years qualifying for these jobs, and work longer hours than most other professionals, under more stressful conditions. If a strike is the only way to get attention for their plight, they are but human, and a strike it is.
The lack of responsive governance in the country means that Pakistanis have been bypassing due process and getting work done any which way they can for years, simply because they know that due process never works. Of late, the alarming tendency is to bypass process straight to protest, because people have discovered the power of the stone, the gun and the Governments Achilles heal: making it look bad. This generally results in at least some kind of response being cobbled together. This has led to increased violence, in an already violent society.
The doctors strike following failed attempts at negotiation is an example of the futility of spending time on due process.
Terminations have begun, and Mr Jameel reports that ward boys and other non qualified persons are being made to fill in for striking doctors in hospitals. The obvious fact that none of these can replace professional expertise, the fact that lives are being lost in the process ought to be reason enough for the government to take make all attempts to settle this dispute. The government however appears to be quite impervious to the seriousness of the situation. At present, a promise to raise salaries in due course appears to be the best they have to offer. Meantime, the YDA has received thousands of letters of resignation from doctors across the Punjab.
And finally as an anti-climax: I am NOT going to say anything about the World cup except that it is said that an Indian parrot had its neck wrung for being too much in the know about the World Cup. Although by the time the last match was played, I too was willing to wring the neck of anyone talking cricket, I cant help but feel rather sorry for the parrot, the tiniest victim of terrorism, and as such, Im sure that when he died he went straight to parrotise, which is more than anyone can say for our ridiculous Interior Minister and his ludicrous statements on the eve of a crucial match.
